


the universe alone

by Anonymous



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Horror, Lighthouse Keeper AU, M/M, Other, Suicide Attempt, Tentacles, dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 10:07:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22482712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Brian has always loved the sea, and it has always loved him in return.[in tandem withto quench this burning thing]
Relationships: Brian David Gilbert/Patrick Gill
Comments: 11
Kudos: 30
Collections: Anonymous





	the universe alone

**Author's Note:**

>   
_Some morning from the boulder-broken beach  
He would cry out on life, that what it wants  
Is not its own love back in copy speech,  
But counter-love, original response.  
  
from "The Most of It" by Robert Frost  
_
> 
> * * *
> 
> __

Brian has always loved the sea, and it has always loved him in return. He knows the taste of salt spray on his lips as intimately as though it were his own skin.

He was not a foolish child—heeded the warnings of his parents and never turned his back to the sea. He learned that he should swim alongside the shoreline should he get pulled into a riptide before he could ride a bicycle. There are many things lurking in the depths, and he has been mindful of them.

And yet, for all of its dangers, the sea has held his heart always.

He had his share of shell shoppe sweethearts and dalliances under the dock, but his passions surged in strong and then reliably receded, leaving only memories of what had been like tide pools in the hearts of others.

One evening the depths of his despair drove him to the wade into the depths of the sea, raising the sea levels infinitesimally with his tears and reaching out for some final comfort. His heels slipped slow and smooth down the grit of the shelf and he shut his eyes tight against the sensation of sinking home at last—

Then the sea reached back.

Cradled and lifted from the depths, the sea held fast to Brian’s body, quavering and wracked with regretful sobs.

It held him until he stilled and slumped slack in its grip, then delivered him to the safety of the shore. It receded with the tide, slipping loose from where it was bound against his body, until he reached out and held onto one inky, vague tendril.

The sea stays with Brian.

They need to be somewhere separate from society. Brian knows that he is a man possessed, but he has no desire to exorcise this presence.

It surprised everyone, the thought that he should choose not to be a sailor, for never there was a man so married to the sea as that Gilbert boy.

But the sailors share the sea amongst themselves. In close quarters, moments of privacy are false and fleeting. Truly, it must have been his destiny to become a light keeper, maintaining the beacon that wards all others away from his solitary spot of sea.

Alone at last, truly alone, They reach out greedily and wrap Brian in the tight embrace of Their many arms, inky and blurred and like staring into a void. They fill him until he spills over with worshipful gratitudes and joyous keening and begs to be bound tight and kept for eternity.

They are gentle, always reaching out one tentative strand to him first. They wait for approval, and Brian always approves.

At last, as the solitary lighthouse keeper on this island, Brian is alone.

He lasts a tremendous amount of time before the isolation gets under his skin. The captain of the supply ship drops by monthly, but he has no time to waste entertaining Brian’s whims. They are a comforting physical presence in every way Brian could want for, but They are silent. All is silent but the mewling of the gulls and the waves breaking upon the rocky shores.

One day he drinks as the sun comes up, stumbles down the spiral staircase without caution. They catch him and steady him more than once. He staggers his way down to the still-dim shore and clambers atop the rocks until he can scream out to the sea.

Brian shouts, the force of ripping words from the depths of his long-unspoken desires grating his throat. He calls out to the sea and begs for companionship, for conversation, for another life. He dashes the empty bottle he’s been gripping onto the rocks in frustration and watches the sun rise until his breathing calms.

A storm blows hard for two days. Rain lashes into Brian as he tries to keep watch, unable to see any consequential distance. They hold his shivering frame, but They have no warmth.

The morning after it clears, Brian ambles about the island to determine what it will take to clear the path to the dock. There is nothing much out of the ordinary until he reaches the shore.

There is a dinghy dashed upon the rocks, and a man slumped and still among the debris.

He scrabbles up and over the rocks to the man, chanting, “No, no, no,” under his breath and then loud and then wailing. Not now, not now, it would be cruel for the universe to hear his prayer and deliver him only the shell of a man.

Brian’s hands are shaky and numb and he almost assesses the man as unbreathing until he places his cheek beside the man’s face, feels a puff of air cooling the sheen of sweat coating him.

“I don’t know how to move him,” Brian despairs, then delights as They reach out and lift the man, gently easing his legs free from splintered wreckage and spiriting him alongside Brian back into the house, resting him atop the sole cot.

They settle around Brian in a tight embrace while he watches over the man in fear and awe and brushes the long dark hair away from his face.

His head is bleeding sluggishly, and They leave once Brian begins to dash about looking for any dry material he has to offset the man’s chilled trembling.

The man stirs periodically, turning his head or blinking his eyes open and then shutting them with a wince. Brian’s turned his pleading inward in the meantime, waiting with his heart in his throat to see if he’s going to make it.

He nearly jumps out of his skin, curled up as he is and reading in the next room when he hears a faint voice rasping, “water.”

Brian delivers him a glass immediately and watches with rapt attention as the man inclines himself just enough to sip from it. The bandaging on his head is inexpert and bulky, but at least he hasn’t bled through.

“Where’m I?” The man asks, voice a little smoother. He’s still cringing against the light of day and doesn’t spare more than a passing glance about the room before his eyes come to rest on Brian, then flutter shut again.

“The lighthouse nearest the cape,” Brian murmurs, sinking to a crouch so that he’s not looming over the man. He hesitates for entirely too long before resting a terrified and greedy hand over the man’s own and tells him, “I found you this morning, after the storm. You and your boat were on the rocks—“

The man sighs and turns away, slips his hand from Brian’s grip. “Stuck, then."

Rising to his feet again, flexing his fingers against the empty air, Brian says, “The supply ship will come by in some weeks. You can ride back to shore then.”

He leaves the man to his own devices, retreating outside ostensibly to continue his cleaning until They arrive and return him to Their familiar and silent attentions.

When Brian returns to start supper, the man is sitting on his cot looking slightly less dazed.

“Where am I?” He asks again, looking at Brian with critical, unremembering eyes.

“The lighthouse,” Brian abbreviates his answer. “I’m the keeper. Brian.”

He juts his hand out gamely and the man blinks at it sluggishly before reaching his own hand out and answering, quiet and unsure, “Gill.”

It’s not right, laughing at anyone in this particular situation. Perhaps Brian’s been on this rock too long and all the proprieties of conversation have leaked right out of him. He gasps apologies between guffaws.

It’s been so long since he’s had to speak at length to someone, to not have an inherent _understanding_.

At least Gill’s just watching him with a bemused little smile.

“It’s just,” Brian says and clears his throat, “it’s just that you’d have had a better time. If you had gills. I wasn’t sure when I found you whether you were drowned or not.”

Gill nods slowly, then looks down to investigate the damp and tattered remains of his clothing.

“I can give you something dry,” Brian offers. Gill nods again and his eyes flutter shut and he sinks his head down into his hands. Brian leaves him like this.

By the time the stew is done, Gill is comfortable moving out to the table. He’s a gangly fellow, even in Brian’s bulkiest sweater. He’s too tall for the pants, but well-prepared for any flooding.

“Thank you,” he all but whispers when Brian sets a bowl down before him.

The silent air between them feels electric. Brian wants to feel it strike him. Below the table, They grip his ankle idly and it grounds him.

Brian puts on the confident voice of someone who was once accustomed to conversing. “Do you remember where you were headed, Gill?”

He shakes his head. “Still fuzzy. I was with a merchant ship, but it was my first time on her.” His eyes close and he inhales deeply when he’s got his first spoonful of stew in his mouth. There’s a long pause while he savors it. “I don’t know how many of us there were. Or how many life boats. I feel like I wasn’t alone in mine.”

It’s surprises Brian, the way his body thrills when Gill sighs gratefully around another mouthful of stew. “Your head might take a few days to clear,” Brian says when he remembers to speak. “It’s a nasty gash you’ve got there.”

“It’s throbbing,” Gill mutters and They squeeze Brian’s calf in response to his sudden tension. “Is that why I’m so tired?”

“Must be,” Brian says. “I need to light the lantern soon and I’ll be up a while yet. The cot is yours for the night.”

There’s no more speaking but there’s measurably less silence. Spoons scrape bowls and mouths blow soft cooling breaths and Gill hums appreciatively around some hunks of potatoes and Brian’s pulse is roaring in his ears.

He scarcely keeps himself from shaking when he stands, Their grasp slipping away when he moves to clear the table and hurry up and up and away from the overwhelm of another living speaking body here with him.

The lonesome longing for conversation and companionship he anticipated. The dizzying wanting for the man seemingly delivered to his feet by divine providence he did not.

They are particularly attentive to him that night, moving all in and on and around to drive this unfamiliar frustration from him. It’s been so long since he was not kept satisfied by Them. They have always been enough, knowing what he needs and when and where.

And Brian keens, mouth muffled-full around Them and feels only the faint prickle of tears at his eyes when he thinks, desperately, how wholly he longs for the imperfection and unpredictability of another man’s touch.

Their grip digs into his skin, Their strength unwavering around his thighs as they drive deep and unrelenting into him until he bows his back against Their hold on his shoulders and wails in defeat out into the sea.

He slumps shaking against Their hold and They set him down gently, carefully. They caress him and this time he does not hold Them to his chest in return, instead lets himself feel the emptiness there.

Gill sleeps sound and silent on the cot, long hair splayed sinfully over Brian’s own pillow. Brian doesn’t linger, checking in on him, and marches himself out to the kitchen with his fists clenched tight, nails bitten too short to dig into his palms painfully.

He wraps himself in a spare quilt and sleeps poorly on the floor in front of the stove, shuddering in the glow of its residual heat with his head pillowed atop Them.

In the coming weeks, Patrick Gill regains much of his memory and strength. He’s lost his glasses in the wreck, but does not suffer much for their loss. He helps Brian with his work and, when plied properly, teaches Brian new shanties.

Brian brings him up to the light tonight, when Patrick is awake and drink-warm and asks to join him.

It feels unexpectedly intimate, sharing this until-now private space with another person. With Patrick.

Brian has been aware—at times painfully—of Patrick’s presence in all of their time spent together. He has been even more aware of his absence in these times.

Lamp lighting duties attended to, they sit together against the wall of the catwalk and face out into the endless expanse of sea.

Patrick tells him about the stars, how on rare nights when the sea is still and flat as a sheet of glass they surround you. He tells of the unease he feels on the stillness of the land, now. He tells of the ships he’s crewed successfully through harrowing storms, but not of the one that they failed.

To hear him tell it, the sea sounds like an entirely different beast from what Brian knows. He’d thought his understanding of it to be authoritative. He feels younger than he has in years, unmoored and pulled into the riptide of Patrick Gill.

He’s hanging on Pat’s every word, time marked only by the steady sweep of the lantern, and he does not notice Their reach for his wrist until They are upon him to remind him of Their presence.

It’s not the time now, nor was it earlier when They had brushed past his ankle while he showed Patrick to the storage shed, nor at supper when They had come to press sudden and shocking against the inside of his thigh. Brian lifts his arm to flick Them away, to shake himself loose from Their questioning pull, and keeps his eyes fixed firm upon Patrick Gill.

It’s nearly another week before when the tension snaps and finds Brian and Patrick suddenly scrabbling to undress one another with Brian’s back up against the bookcase. Patrick tastes like coffee, and sea, and a warm and living man. His growing stubble scrapes gently, joyfully against Brian’s bare skin as Patrick charts a thorough path down his jawline.

“Oh, God,” Brian whimpers when Pat hitches his leg up and sets his ass against the edge of a shelf and finally, finally they break apart long enough for Brian’s damned sweater to come off and—

There are bruises, of course, and welts besides. In the sudden still of Patrick’s fervor, Brian becomes acutely aware of the ache in his spread legs breaking painful and he winces.

They’ve been less gentle, lately. It’s not exactly unwanted. It’s not _cruel_. They give as good as They ever have and if perhaps Brian has to cringe through moments of discomfort, it doesn’t change the fact that eventually They will make him feel good if only for one bright moment and that They are gentle with him after, tracing lightly along the seeds of the bruises they’ve planted to bloom in the morning.

Brian doesn’t spend much time before mirrors. Doesn’t spend much time nude in the daylight. Was not aware of the severity of Their coverage.

He breaks apart from Patrick awkwardly and does his best to avoid questioning rather than explain the whole endeavor. Rather than drive him away.

Patrick pushes back against this, angry in his confusion, but it’s Brian who retreats with cruel barbs and flees upward early and unfed.

He lights the lamp immediately, unwilling to have his sole task looming over him when he’s eager to wallow in his despair. Against the railing, he sinks to his knees and lets his mind drift into the too-fleeting sense memories of mere minutes ago, of coffee and warmth and scratchy breaths against his neck.

They come to him while he’s palming himself furtively through his pants. It’s not uncommon, for Them to help. Not unexpected.

What is unexpected is how They wrench his arms back without conceding to the painful protests of his shoulders. How They tear his clothes in haste and fury. How They give him no quarter as They take, monstrous and unfeeling and muffling his cries against the crash of waves long into the night.

Patrick keeps his distance for some days. Doesn’t inquire after Brian’s gait. Wakes Brian for his work when he’s slept his days away on the cot they’ve taken to using in shifts.

They’re sharing coffee in silence one morning when Patrick reaches across the table and rests his hand upon Brian’s, only to pull it back in hasty retreat when Brian yanks his away with a sudden wave of terror. He stands, knocking his chair back, and flees to go check the supply stores.

He’s thoroughly distracted and does not notice that he’s been followed until Patrick is upon him, distraught and apologizing and near begging to know what he’s done wrong. What he’s misunderstood.

And Brian’s shaking his head and his body is shaking him and what spills out of his mouth is not an explanation so much as confessions of adjacent truths. The loneliness. The heartache. The fear of having someone close only for them to be taken away.

Patrick’s arms are sturdy around him. Brian burrows his fingers until the tangles of Patrick’s hair and he holds them fast together even as he fears it may bring his undoing.

Brian doesn’t know why They haven’t made contact with him below the catwalk of the lighthouse since that day, but he accepts this state of things and marches upward nightly with his stomach sinking in equilibrium to every step.

If They are watching his goings-on below, Brian cannot tell. He doesn’t know where They go, or where They come from, when They appear from some unknowable black haze like a rift through the universe.

Regardless, They have not been especially unkind since that night. Brian keeps his breathing steady and They take him gently and thoroughly and They hold him through the aftershocks and he holds Them to him for want of another.9

He asks things of Them again, and They provide attentively.

Things slide back into normalcy, and with Patrick Gill’s imminent departure on the next supply ship, it will soon be as if none of this had ever occurred at all.

He can tell Patrick is troubled by the way he’s been conducting himself. The fury with which he dismissed any notion of Patrick joining him atop the lighthouse again has been too suspect to ignore, surely.

And Patrick is no fool. Though he studiously does not mention the changing landscape of marks across the glimpses of Brian’s body, he knows Patrick is charting its cartography.

Their contact is passionate but limited. Patrick says nothing of Brian’s tendency to flee past a certain point, but seeks him out once he’s loose-limbed and settled with self-satiation.

Brian braces for the conflict between them, for another argument and the misery of being stuck together still until the ship comes in.

But of course, that’s not how it happens.

Brian never had any need to lock the door. He is as alone here as a man possessed can be.

It comes as a shock, then, when he’s sighing into the slow twine of slick tentacles up his thigh and the door swings open with a heavy groan.

At once, Brian’s eyes shoot open and he sees Them take immediate hold of Patrick, binding his arms behind his back and sweeping his feet together out from under him. He lands with a thud onto his side, gasping in air against the pain.

This is the first time Brian has seen Them from an outside perspective. The way They originate from a dream-vague point in space around Patrick to cinch tight around his ankles as more and more of Them creep out from Their epicenter.

He has barely enough time to yell Patrick’s name before They’ve got a tendril in his mouth, tepid and foreign-famliar and filling in a way that brooks no argument.

If he plays this right perhaps They will let Patrick leave unscathed.

With conscious effort, Brian relaxes back into them. Where They had tightened tense against his thigh, They loosen gradually and resume Their teasing explorations. It takes some time for his thoughts to calm enough to notice that They are moving more slowly than usual. More demonstratively.

Patrick is still bound up on his side, with a tentacle across his mouth and another wrenching his head upright by the scalp so that he can’t help but watch as They take Brian apart expertly.

It is enjoyable, in some desperate way. Being shown off like this, cared for so thoroughly. It seems like an eternity has stretched on before They even begin to tease open the buttons of his pants and he groans into it gratefully.

His eyes flutter closed as They run over his chest appreciatively, slowly peeling his clothing away to bare him, when he hears Patrick whining unexpectedly.

They’ve lifted Patrick upright at this point, but left him held tight while They brush experimentally over the telltale bulge of his cock. His face is flushed as he strains to move into Their touch as much as Their hold allows for.

Slowly, They still Their explorations of Brian and withdraw Their tendril from his mouth, leaving him slack jawed and panting in Their wake as he watches Them turn Their attentions to Patrick with a tentative curiosity.

They stretch him out, splay the branches of his body, and trace all up and down his arms and legs while making frequent detours to skim teasing against the long line of his erection. He whimpers and gasps responsively, and They redouble their efforts with vigor.

Brian rasps Patrick’s name but it comes out too raw to be heard over the sudden noise Patrick makes as they rip Brian’s too-tight clothing from him impatiently.

It’s difficult to concentrate on everything at once. The familiar feeling of being opened up. Patrick’s face as They mirror Their actions with him. What he can see of Patrick’s body that is not obscured by Them. What Patrick can see of him, and the intensity in his gaze as he looks.

They experiment with working in symmetry, which Brian can tell even when his eyes slip shut by the way he hears his own experiences echoed in Patrick’s gasps. They play them off each other as well, taking turns with stilling Their movements on one of them while moving performatively along the other.

Slowly, over minutes, They draw Brian and Patrick closer together. With every time one of them gains ground pitching forward in gasping surrender, the other follows suit. Then, both held arms back and near-parallel to the ground, Brian is finally close enough to feel Patrick’s wet breath hot against his face. He strains his neck forward, whining against the stretch, and he can see that Patrick is doing the same until they are finally given enough slack to meet, kissing messy and fleeting, mouths meeting and sliding away and reconnecting as they both writhe against their respective attentions.

Before long a tentacle wends its way between their lips and they kiss at each other sloppily around and over and through it as They move it aimlessly between Patrick’s mouth or Brian’s or caress their faces with it.

This is familiar to Brian, who is flexible and capable, but Patrick strains a bit when They reposition the two with Brian more upright above Patrick, suspended and laid back and forced into an arch that has him straining. They let one of Patrick’s legs dangle loose and it seems to help him surrender.

Brian can’t touch him anymore and whines for the loss, though that whine is soon lost to Their intrusions when They splay his legs once more.

Patrick’s choking around a tentacle working its way insistently deep into his throat when Brian falls forward closer to him. He reaches out, wanting, and They raise Patrick’s arm to his, let them twine their fingers and then wrap Their tendrils around the locked hands.

They’re putting Patrick through his paces and he thrashes with it, bucking up against the one inattentive tentacle resting slack and teasing over his cock while he can clearly see Them demonstrating the rewards of Brian’s cooperation. It’s hard to dwell on any question of unfairness when They’re working in tandem to fill him deeply and slide with a frantic rhythm around his cock.

Perhaps it was strategy, for as soon as Brian’s sure he’s approaching his limit, They’re assailing Patrick from all sides at a punishing pace and Brian forces his eyes to remain open when he finally comes so he can hope to see what Patrick looks like when he falls apart too.

They drop him— from a short distance but suddenly—on top of Patrick and Brian’s breathing in the scent of his shuddering skin for some time before he notices that they’re still being held aloft. That They are wrapped around their two bodies and holding them tight together with nothing between them but their shared spend while They gentle them through the aftershocks and into safe harbors.

Brian never finds out what happened to the old captain of the supply ship. If Patrick knows, he never tells him—simply slips seamlessly into the open position. Like clockwork, the sea churns angry once he’s docked at the lighthouse every month and there’s naught to be done but wait out the storm together.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [to quench this burning thing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22483438) by Anonymous 


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